2142 - thoughts?

Tellox

Well, after spending 4hrs or so downloading the huge huge demo, I was well rared up to go, after previously spending a huge amount of time on bf1942.

Download, install, download new directX since EA like to keep us busy, play.

I would not have been more dissapointed if my computer punched me straight in the face. Which Im suprised it didnt, considering the ****e I put it through.

The demo was completely WOEFUL. I mean like, sweet jesus christ it was bad.

The vehicles are awful. Futuristic tanks = tanks from the mid-90's, wheels replaced with shiney lights and slower moving turrets than ever. Futuristic jet = helicopter.

It was stupidly easy to capture any point on the map. Soldiers are so,so dispersed,and no-one defends. If you can make it to the point, you're going to capture it, unless a friendly soldier shoots you down - which happens often enough.

Typical scenario; Youre in a tank, and get shot at. You spent 30seconds turning the turret around to do so much as aim at the ****er, and he retreats behind a wall and vanishes off. You will NEVER see him again. Ever. You then get shot at from the other side. Repeat until n where n = infinity.

There is little to no futuristic feel. Im fairly sure turrets in 150 years wont take minutes to turn and fire one shot every other minute. Im fairly sure zoom techniques will be of actual use.

And theres no real "battlefield" feel to it, either. In bf1942, it felt like you were actually on a battlefield. In 2142,you see robots running about, allies shooting eachother, and people dispersed all over the map,before the EA server crashes.

Take planetside, scale it down, play havoc with the controls, remove the fun, and piss all over it, and you get bf2142.

Really thought it was awful. Opinions?

bizmark

So glad i didnt wast my time downloading the demo now i knew it would be bad but not as bad as the reports im getting on it

Spear

It's not even a proper mod, it's barely a reskinning.

Dreamcrusher

As i said in the other thread, i think EA might finally have pushed people a bit too far this time. Most other forums i go to the feeling is pretty much the same, i.e its a glorified mod and not worth 50 euro.

ambro25

Echoing the general consensus here

Finished d'ling the torrent in record time, installed right away and really eager to see for myself what the fuss is all about...

...about not much at all, as it turned out. Disappointment ain't quite the word.

Combat doesn't feel as 'dynamic' as BF1942 or BF2, balance between infantry and vehicle/combat robot is really off, the map (demo - "something Arabic plant") is sprawling but very flat with next to no vantage (snipers real easy to locate/pin out), the 'I-shot-him-a-mag-full-in-the-face-yet-he-still-kills-me-with-one-shot' is worse than ever.

Very disappointed and now that I've tried the thing for myself, I know my next (hardware) upgrade will be to improve my BF2 experience, certainly not any 2142 experience.

psycho_frodo

Hopefully ETQW will be a lot better.

PrivateSmokey

psycho_frodo wrote:

Hopefully ETQW will be a lot better.

Its impossable to be worse:p It will be a massive improvement on 2142.

Although some people Say they like 2142, imo there kidding themselves the demo is free.
The real crunch will be forking out the 50 hard earned spondollies for more of the same S**T.
And then waiting for the patches to fix Server crashes,CTDs and what ever glittches and bugs are found.
All of the beta testing x 2 and there are still CTDs and lost connections regularly

Dig a big hole, in a big feild,stick 2142 init,and Nuke the feild.

DirkVoodoo

Ok, im going to have to say that the last time I played battlefield was before the days of broadband and it was 1942 (the game, not the actual year I played it) and all i could manage was a bot match.

I thought this was a pretty good game, as a newb, I played it with my brother too and we had a bit of fun. Granted the level of organisation in a game full of random players is non-existent, but i think the scope is there for some interesting games with groups of friends/clans. It would definitely be a good LAN game in college or something.

The weapons really lacked punch for me, which is always the dealbreaker for me. Ever since playing FEAR i have found it disappointing when games dont reproduce the same level of reality that those guns had. For the most part they feel like pea-shooters.

The titan mode is fun, but as mentioned, it is just a messy scramble for each point, with few battles for control occuring. TKing is a bit ridiculous, which happens a lot on the titan ships themselves as it is all close quarters shooting.

The other letdown is the lack of distinctiveness between the two sides. I used to be a big starcraft fan, mainly because balance in gameplay was achieved through careful thought and not just cloning the units for each side. There is simply no real difference between the PAC and EU forces in terms of weaponry and vehicles. Given that they have the license to be creative with a futuristic setting, one would think the designers would have a little more fun with the weapons.

youcancallmeal

I must say I liked the concept of the Titan's and that the shields have to be taken down etc. Though this doesn’t outweigh the fact that it’s a very poor game by Battlefield standards. There are so many things wrong I don’t know where to start. First the HUD is ridiculously cluttered with all sorts of pointless bits and pieces vying to get your attention, the movement feels really jerky especially when sprinting, the weapons balance is all over the place, pretty much all turret weapons feel sluggish and unresponsive and the demo map is too big so its probably the same for the rest of them. At the end of the day it really does just feel like just an add on for bf2.

I can’t wait to see this crash and burn like those easily destroyed futuristic transport ships.

hairball

Hmm, in fairness its a little more than just a re skin, there's some game mechanics which i can't understand why ea, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to include in the demo, that being the kit unlocks ,so obviously there's gonna be balance issues there.
Also for a 'reskin' there's a hell of a lot of new animation and modelling work gone into the game from what i've seen, and that's only on one level.
from what i've seen so far i'd class it as a pretty large expansion pack for bf2, and while some quibbling about the price may be justified, maybe wait until the full game is out but dropping a final verdict, tho i do think ea really should have included more in the demo, it's def a bad demo release by them.

Ponster

The BF2 demo didn't have any unlocks either, and only 1 map, yet that didn't work out so bad.

R0ot

Ponster wrote:

The BF2 demo didn't have any unlocks either, and only 1 map, yet that didn't work out so bad.

Ponster m8 you of all people should know thats bs, remember the very first thing found out about the demo was the ability to enable all unlocks by changing a simple binary code in one of the bf2 sys files. tut tut and you a mod

Ponster

Ahhh; and who's to say that I haven't figured out how to do the same with the beta?

Actually since I played the beta for 3 weeks I've tried all the unlocks so know what you lot are not missing

To be honest I haven't tried the demo but one of my top 3 bugs wasn't fixed for the demo (when you place an object like a shield on the titan, and the titan is moving, then it behaves as though it was attached to the ground i.e. the shield will slowly move to the back of the titan as though anchoured to the earth).

projectmayhem

i think it's very good. i'm sold on it anyway. yeah, it feels different to bf2 (in terms of the way tanks handle and so forth), but it's not bf2... hovering tanks aren't going to feel like cars ffs.

as for as it being just a re-skinned game, i did think that until i played the demo. it's a mod in the same way counter-strike and day of defeat are mods of half life... same idea, different game.

i can see some things being changed, like the power of the APC things. but for the most part it seems quite well done. it's also definitely better optimised then bf2, though there's still a memory leak issue.

in the end this game could have addressed 90% of the issues bf2 had and still taken heat for being "teh suck" by the "hardcore"... same as every single change in CSS taking flack unnecessarily.

Pyr0

Was just thinking there. The demo offers no unlocks what so ever, which in turn stops people from being revived (assualt unlock) and generally clan matchs are played without unlocks which stops unfair advantages. Now not being able to revive unless you unlock the paddles will really take away the fun of a clan match.

jesus_thats_gre

Tellox wrote:

,before the EA server crashes.

It is interesting that you say that. I know someone who actually owns a hosting company and he was telling me that he did not have a single server crash on the launch day; he is running about 15 full servers by the way.

So did they actually crash or is this some bandwagon jumping?

PrivateSmokey

Iv lost connection on a good few occasions ingame no lag no stutter,Yet it doesnt happen on BF2 since 1.4 now.I have had 2 CTDs.
Maybe its the EA account connection to there server and not the actual hosting servers?
But is says your connection has been lost.
Played 2hrs of BF2 last night and no connection problems (didnt think I ever hear myself saying that lol).

TheHairyFairy

General view is that its crap, like we didnt know that. OK Lads, time to move on Splash Damage will be our heroes.

projectmayhem

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

It is interesting that you say that. I know someone who actually owns a hosting company and he was telling me that he did not have a single server crash on the launch day; he is running about 15 full servers by the way.

So did they actually crash or is this some bandwagon jumping?

i've been booted a few times. not just from servers, but from the EA account server. i guess they're just getting completely hammered right now

DirkVoodoo

Yeah, no lag issues for me around 20/30 ping, plus my bro and myself are sharing a connection. The whole logging onto EA master server is a pain in the proverbials tho, i have lost my connection to this a few times. Other times it just hangs on "connecting to EA master server" when i try and log on. Like the game tho, just wish sniper rifle packed a bit more punch.

[AK47][JONNYNEW

Its will be as stable as 1.4 bf2.

Because basically all it is is 1.4 BF2 with shiny new skins and guns that don't work.

Having said that, the demo has come a long way from the Beta.
The unlocks are ok but nothing to write home about.

The gun didn't work what so ever in the beta.
but in the demo i actually had a + kill death ratio

my 10cent

Hercule

I gotta admit i really enjoy the demo. People need to keep in mind that the wrong kind of people will usually fill up the demo servers so "teammates not doing things right" wont be a relelvant problem once the game is established.(similiar to the old BF2 demo where ppl that may not even be big into computer games join and spend 30 standing still shooting at teammates/inanimate objects etc.). I also find that roughly 75% of the people in a 32-64 man server have absolutely no idea whats going on which easily takes away from the tactical aspect of the game - again this wont be a problem after ppl learn the gameplay.

Its important to realise tho that the gameplay in the demo is unfinished as at the moment for example the non guided engineer rocket launcher (mitchell?) is just plain crap with the rockets travelling in completely random directions and missing at point blank range when targeting a 10 foot tall walking tank happens too often. All unlocks like grenades/better weapons arent available toowhich makes taking out walkers/tanks on foot near impossible.As soon as people start using AT mines and remote bombs the tank/walker whoring wont happen anymore. Also i assume they will make the Doragon stronger especially since the TV missile is too difficult to use.

Im fairly sure people are going into this demo assuming they are going to hate it and when they slightest thing goes wrong they feel validated. Try to keep an open mind and play with a bunch of friends and you will have to try hard not to have a great laugh especially in those titan attacks :eek:

Monty - the one and only

Ponster wrote:

Ahhh; and who's to say that I haven't figured out how to do the same with the beta?

Actually since I played the beta for 3 weeks I've tried all the unlocks so know what you lot are not missing

To be honest I haven't tried the demo but one of my top 3 bugs wasn't fixed for the demo (when you place an object like a shield on the titan, and the titan is moving, then it behaves as though it was attached to the ground i.e. the shield will slowly move to the back of the titan as though anchoured to the earth).

tbh the demo is a hell of alot more stable than the beta... servers dont crash when titans start moving...as far as organiation goes, most servers dont have it yet but some do...had some really fun battles is both titan and conquest mode. Feel of some of the weapons has changed since the beta also for example support weapon dosent overheat as often... I didnt enjoy the last version of the beta at all... this demo is worth playing, already preordered as a result of it.

BULLER

i for one will not be buying this game after playing that demo.... :mad:
Message to EA: BRING BACK 1942 IN BF3!!!!

Silverfish

BULLER wrote:

i for one will not be buying this game after playing that demo.... :mad:
Message to EA: BRING BACK 1942 IN BF3!!!!

What do you mean by 'Bring back 1942' exactly?

kirving

He means bring back the gameplay of 1942 with the graphics engine of BF2.

And it should cost the same as an expansion pack. Point of existance is a better mod than a 50 euro "new game" is gonna be. 2142 is only bf2 re-skinned!

spooky donkey

UT2K4?

Youre thoughts?

Yeah a good game and a better one that 2142 and its 2 years old and I still dont play that it.

Dreamcrusher

Silverfish wrote:

What do you mean by 'Bring back 1942' exactly?

if youd ever played 1942 youd know exactly what he was talking about

Keyzer

I think the whole "future" thing has no appeal at all.
Having said that, I don't have a clue where EA will go with the franchise after 2142...

Can they really go back and do 1942 again? Would it work?

Instant Karma

I'd love to see 1942 recreated on an updated version, FH2 should be nice for BF2 but i've always hoped DICE would go back to a WW2 scenario.

hairball

yeh i thinkthe futuristic setting is either something that appeals or not, as to where they're gonna go after this, they seem to be already promotoing battlefield:bad company on the next gen consoles pretty heavily already, apparently its got a hefty singleplayer component, as to pc battlefield, i'm sure revisiting 1942 on a kick arse new engine would be a popular move for a lot of fans and i'm sure it would sell a lot, but with the forgotten hope team making a mod that looks like its gonna do this (for free) i really wonder if there's a point (apart from them making shed loads of cash, that is) it is pretty hard to seewhat new settings they can push it into.....continuing the timeline into the future? maybe, but i think they'd be isolating the franchise from a lot of people in doing this.